


Inhuman

by sigmatimelord



Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: Dan doesn’t understand how Herbert manages to live, Gen, How Do I Tag, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 10:17:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20704346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigmatimelord/pseuds/sigmatimelord
Summary: Dan thinks about his roommate





	Inhuman

**Author's Note:**

> My will to write was reanimated and like Herbert’s creations it doesn’t want to stop moving

There’s something off about Herbert West, Dan thinks. Now, he’s not an idiot. He knows Herbert West isn’t normal by any sense of the word. But he’s even stranger than the typical antisocial genius. Something inhuman.

It’s in the way he looks at people. Like they’re parts and not a creature the same as he. That there’s a difference. He seems the most alive when amongst the dead, almost as if he takes the life from the departed to use for his own. Dan didn’t like to entertain those morbid thoughts but one had to when dealing with a scientist obsessed with death.

Even death itself didn’t seem to have a hold on the scientist. Choking caustic chemicals and a constricting snake of an intestine. He surprised Dan by appearing at the door of their house, bruised and chemical burnt yet still living despite Meg dying from similar but lesser wounds. He saw the bruises on Herbert’s throat, like he had been strangled or hung. They were gone too soon for a typical human.

Over half a year later, Herbert had been buried alive with his morbid creations (No longer doodles. These were horrific sculptures of a mad mind), tons of rock falling on creator and creation alike. He surprised Dan once again by crawling out of the rubble hours later, bones broken, blood leaking from beyond his lips, skin scratched and marred by lacerations and bruises, turning his pale skin into a living canvas. Dan was sure that Herbert should not have survived, much less manage to claw his way out of the tomb he had been left in to die. But Herbert had. 

Death had no hold on him.

Dan suspected that it was all the glowing green that Herbert injected into his veins. He should have died but his body and mind refused, aided by his unholy concoction. Herbert would’ve laughed if he heard Dan call it that. Claim that the divine had no hold on his work. 

Dan was sure something had a hand in it. Phosphorus didn’t glow as brightly nor as long as the reagent did. 

He didn’t used to believe the wild stories from around Arkham and Miskatonic, but having seen what Herbert West was capable of doing, he was more inclined to believe the claims of creatures man was not supposed to know of and the madness the sights can bring. After all, he was sure that he sometimes saw things moving in the dark shadows of the lab and in Herbert’s shadow. The glow of the reagent seemed unearthly, and whatever was lit up by it seemed different in some way.

But at the end of the day, Dan had thrown in his lot with Herbert West, and there was little he could do to escape. The man always had the right words to say to keep him bound despite having the social capabilities of an annoyed cat about to lash out with claws. Always the right words to drag him back by his strings like a puppet. 

He persisted. The cause was noble, the methods not. But science demands sacrifice, like some unknown god, and Herbert West was a devout priest at the altar, a sacrificial dagger in hand. Dan just hoped he wasn’t the next one to be on the slab, carved by that knife.


End file.
